Happy Dia de los Madres (Mexican Mothers Day)!!! Today was not NEARLY as crazy I thought it was going to be — the only people we really saw partying were a bunch of guys (ironic, I know) in a restaurant with the music turned wayyyyy up. No joke, they had 3 stacks for one room — they’re outdoing even Duncan College. Needless to say, we ordered out. 🙂

Today I got to talk to the community members we had been trying to design a device for all semester. A lot was just trying to see what they wanted out of a device. But we were also able to show them the preliminary prototype that we had come up with in CEVE 314. Out of curiosity, we collected some water samples for bacteria tests as well.

San Juan Cancuc was a drive down the mountain for us, which we all thought was funny because we call it “los altos” or “the highlands” in Spanish. This area of Chiapas is just gorgeous (see picture below). I fell asleep on Su Chen’s shoulder on the 2-3 hour ride there because we had gotten up early in order to walk to our meting point. Su Chen said it made her “feel like my boyfriend,” but she didn’t move me (true friend right there). I eventually got woken up by the bumpiness of the road — although Moi was driving relatively slow, everyone was still bouncing around like rag dolls.

Moi also works for Cantaro Azul and does a lot of field work for these communities because he grew up in Oxchuc, and therefore speaks Tzeltal. Most people in San Juan Cancuc  are more indigenous, and therefore speak Tzeltal instead of Spanish. Tzeltal is a language derived from Mayan. This made communicating fun because I would talk to Sinead in English, which she would summarize into Spanish, which Moi would then flip to Tzeltal. Once the community members replied, the translation train would begin again in the opposite direction. This actually flowed a lot more naturally than it sounds because I understood a lot of the Spanish Moi was using.

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We were able to talk to three different families below. These families all have good relationships with Cantaro Azul, so the responses are likely skewed towards more openness and interest in new devices.

• H1 refers to Miguel and Maria’s home
• H2 refers to Don Juan and Dominga’s home
• H3 refers to Francisco and Juana’s home

Our main goal was to try to learn more about current practices so that we could better integrate our device into their current lives. A big goal was to try and find entry points where our device could make lives easier, and therefore increase chances of successful implementation. Moi says that because the device will likely require very different practices than what is currently done, a 50% adoption rate would be considered a success. It seems low, but its a testament to how hard it is to design a device that will actually be used by a culture that tends to be more wary of outside technology.

We discussed the three main topics below, and filled out the a survey (in the read more section) alongside the conversation.

• Current washing/rinsing habits of cups
• Current storage habits of cups
• Potential cleaning methods for cups

Our findings are as follows. I have bolded the main points.

Current washing/rinsing habits of cups

Families tend to first wash their cups, they then rinse again before use. I have divided the responses as such.

Washing:

• 2/3 (H1&H2) families prefer to use soap when washing cups
  • Chlorine smells and it takes too long to evaporate
  • Chlorine might be expensive
  • Chlorine is forgettable
• 1/3 (H3) families prefer chlorine when washing cups
  • Chlorine is more effective at killing bacteria

Rinsing:

• 2/3 (H1 and H2) families used tap water to rinse their cups
• 1/3 (H3) families used garrafon water. Juana said she always rinses this way, but she initially handed us the cup unrinsed, so I don’t know if that is true. She also may have just misunderstood what we were asking.

Challenges: Time. In general, the women would like to spend less time washing their plates and dishes.

• H1 spends around 30 minutes washing dishes after each meal. She currently throws dirty dishes into another container and then washes them later when she has time.
• H2, only has a household of three, spends around 15 min after each meal
• H3 spends anywhere from 6 to 20 minutes

Current storage habits of cups and potential improvements

Current storage:

• All families store plates or cups in a bucket if possible.
  • H1 does not have room in the bucket for cups. Those are stored face down on their corn grinder. Plates are stored in a trashcan on the stairs (no lid, outside)
  • H2 stores cups in a bucket but has no room for plates
  • H3 stores cups and plates in  a bucket throws a cloth over the top of it

Future storage:

• All families would like a larger storage
• All families would like a lid
• All families were open to the idea of storing/soaking dishes in a liquid medium (even if that liquid medium was bleach)

Potential cleaning methods for cups

At this point, we showed people the prototype that we had assembled earlier. I’m really glad I was realistic about the limitations of our device, because it allowed us to introduce it as a preliminary prototype. It also allowed me to laugh along when everyone joked about how difficult it was to pull up on the handle. Here’s a video of Juana using the prototype and a picture of Francisco using the device as well.

Juana using prototype

We also laughed because every time we showed the device the wife would stand up and go grab a bowl that they drink out of. And it was the same bowl (different colors) every time. And they would try to make it fit every time (picture below). This wasn’t as much of a concern for us because the original prototype was larger, and the design itself could be easily scaled up.

Our major concerns are:

1. That it is currently too difficult to pull up the handle
2. That the device is not sturdy enough
3. That we may need more sprays to cover the size of the bowl

We also noted that there was not intermediate storage of water, they gave us water directly from the garrafon. Francisco and Juana even had a spigot already.

Bacterial Tests

We also retrieved water samples in an unrinsed cup and water in a cup rinsed with tap water to get an idea of whether tap water was actually contaminating the cup further. Granted, I recognize that this was not the most scientific manner of collecting data as we only took 3 samples. We also did not collect in doubles for quality control and we did not test the garrafon water as a control. Our pipettes were also questionably sterilized because they all came in a plastic bag together (finding those pipettes was a whole other adventure entirely). BUT, it still gives enough of a general idea of the amount of total coliforms and E. coli present in the cups that would need to be removed.

I hope this wasn’t toomuch of an information dump!

-Horatia